What would you pay for an extra
20 or 30, not just healthy years, but vibrant years. I want to give hope to
people who are aging that there's a whole new set of incredible breakthroughs coming our way.
Prepare yourself for an amazing world ahead.
Ever feel like your best days are behind
you? Do you ever wonder if you can get back that energy and that passion that you once
had? We'll get ready because today we're going to talk about how anyone can radically
improve their longevity by making just a few simple changes that you can start today.
Named by Fortune as one of the world's 50 greatest leaders. Peter Diamandis is the founder
of the XPRIZE Foundation, which leads the world in operating large scale incentive competitions
that redefine what's possible. As an entrepreneur, he started over 20 companies in the areas
of longevity, space, venture capital, and education. He's the co-founder of Bold
Capital Partners of Venture Fund with over 500 million investing in exponential technologies.
He's written four national bestselling books and is on a mission to transform our understanding
of health and longevity. Buckle up ya’ll. Peter is about to share some simple shifts
that'll revolutionize the way we age.
I loved something that I watched on one of the
videos on your website, and you and I have known each other for a long time, but I'm like, I
just need to get back into my friend Peter's world. And it was this notion of we have to
stop complaining about problems and shift the conversation to starting to solve these problems.
And it was really, really important for me to hear personally, and I'm going to share more about that
in a few minutes. But I want to start off with you telling us what is this challenge that we have
around health span and longevity, and why are you so passionate about this, especially right now.
So let's start with defining what health span is versus lifespan, right? So lifespan is how long
your heart is going, how long your brainwaves are active. And healthspan is how long do you
feel great. How long do you actually enjoy life? Being able to go out with your kids
or grandkids, fulfill your purpose in life, really be an active member. And for us, most
people realize that lifespan today can be late seventies into eighties, but especially in
the United States, health span really begins to dissipate before then...
Yes.
…and it can be a low, slow, long, 20 year period
of time where you become cognitively disabled, physically disabled, and no one wants to
live long in that situation. But for me, the realization is that it's this decade that
we are gaining the tools to understand how to actually extend that health span. Why we age, how
to slow it, even stop it, maybe even reverse it.
And so it's an exciting time to be alive.
And that's coming really from my world of converging exponential technologies where AI
and gene therapies and stem cells and all of these things are coming together. And I think
everyone knows this and feels this, there is no greater wealth than your health. I remember
Joe Polish, a mutual friend of ours, when I was down for the count many years ago, he told me the
quote that has always stuck with me, that a man or woman who has her health has a thousand dreams
and the man or woman who does not has but one.
Yeah, so…
And it's so true.
It is so true. And I want to talk about that.
So the reason why that quote struck me so much about the complaining versus the problem
solving. So I wrote that book, Everything Is Figureoutable, right?
Yes.
And so that's been my life mantra, and I'll
probably cry when I say this, but it's just because it's real. And that was something
that's taught to me by my mom. And right now, she's in the most devastating crisis where she
doesn't want to be here anymore. She's 75. And I have found myself complaining about the healthcare
system, how challenging it's to navigate, finding solutions. And I'm very solutions
oriented and I love her more than anything.
Of course.
And this notion though, that we need to have a purpose and we'll get
there a little bit later in the conversation, but that's why I was so excited that you are
coming today and that we've known each other for so long because this is such important work.
I had a company meeting right before you got here and I was talking to them about another interview
that we did with a scientist, a biochemist, and I was sharing like, Hey guys, you guys all have to
watch this, especially as we're into the holiday season. You're going to be with your family,
they're going to be making eating choices. Please watch this episode because it's going to support
them. Just like how I want everyone to watch this episode and share it with their families because
I'm in the midst of something that I've never experienced before. I had no idea how hard this
was. It's been going on for like six months.
And so the reason I'm saying all that is
everything that we're talking about today, if the folks in my audience haven't hit it yet,
it's coming for so many of us. I'm 47 right now and my parents are 75. And it's like they went
from being kind of amazing. Everything was great to, everything is in the toilet all at once
and it's overwhelming. So this notion that we have some semblance of control over both our
lifespan and most importantly our healthspan, it's just critical. So another one of your quotes
that I loved was, everything is science fiction until it's signs fact.
Yes.
And how I love this. I didn't realize that
there are whales that live to 200…
Yeah, The bowhead whale can live 200 years
old and then the Greenland shark can live 500 years old and have babies at 200 years
old. Imagine having babies throughout your first couple hundred years of life.
I even didn’t want to have babies in my first 47. I'm not for that. But the point is
that this is why it was interesting to me your conversation with David Sinclair,
which I've read his books as well, and this notion that our lifespan from his point
of view, it's largely a software problem.
It is.
Can you speak to that?
Yeah. I remember when I first saw that stat, I was
watching a television show in long lived sea life and I learned about sea turtles and greenland
sharks and bowhead whales. And I was like, why can they live that long and why can't we?
And I was in a joint MD engineering program and I remember thinking it's either a software problem
or a hardware problem and we're going to be able to fix those. And I honestly believe this is the
decade that we are getting our hands on the tech to do that. And so the spoiler, the punchline here
is your job, if you're listening to this, is to stay healthy enough, vibrant enough to intercept
all of the breakthroughs that are coming tomorrow, like the day after tomorrow, this decade. It
is AI technologies, it is quantum technologies, it is stem cells and gene therapies and epigenic
reprogramming, and all of these areas are coming together and there's no bigger business
opportunity on the planet than health.
What would you pay for an extra 20 or 30,
not just healthy years, but vibrant years, right? I mean, going back to your mom, and I've
seen this, of course, people first of all retire if they're forced out by policy, their company
or retirement age, but they retire if they're in pain or if they're out of energy. But what
if you had all the vibrancy at 75 that you had at 40 and you're at the top of your game. You've
got wisdom, you've got the experiences of life, you've got expanded family, you've got places now
you can afford to go. That would be amazing.
It would be amazing.
And so that's the goal. That is the goal. How do we enable that? And I think,
I have no question it is doable. And so I think about my mom, God bless, she's 87 going on 88, and
I have two boys that are 12 years old. I want them to know her. And so I want that vibrancy. I want
that health span extension, not just lifespan.
So we are software and hardware as
humans. And here's the realization, our bodies were never designed to live past age
30. If you go back a hundred thousand years ago was homo sapiens on the savannas of Africa.
You'd be pregnant at age 12 or 13 when you went to puberty. You'd be a grandparent by 27
or 28 and before culture, written language, all of these things. What we wanted to do is
really perpetuate our species by passing our genome along. And before there was McDonald's and
Whole Foods and food was scarce, we had no idea where our next meal is coming from. Our brains are
wired for fear and scarcity. If you stole the food as the bigger adult from the newborn child, you
were not going to perpetuate your species.
And so you would die and give back your bits
to the environment. And because we would not typically procreate past age 30 if you would,
there was no selective factors in the environment for people living longer. And so we're all
downhill after 30. Our stem cell populations decrease, our muscles get weaker, our immune
system gets weaker and such. And so that's just the way it's programmed right now, but it doesn't
mean it's the way it needs to remain that way.
So there's a lot that's happened over the last a
hundred years. We took the average life expectancy of humans, women living always a little bit
longer than men, but we've doubled it in the last a hundred years. And that's come from antibiotics
and sanitation and pasteurization. But we are now have a window and into really understanding how
do we take the next leap forward? And it's coming. There's zero question about it.
So it's not if, it’s when.
It’s when, yeah.
One of the things that I've been having, I was talking to you about my family. So basically what
happened, both my parents got covid earlier this year and my mom got her ass kicked by it. Like
really got her ass kicked. And they didn't catch it very soon. It was just, it's been this ongoing
mess. And she is pretty decimated right now.
And my dad, who's amazing physically walks
over 10 miles a day and he goes to his workout class a few times a week. He manages type
two diabetes. And we've made huge strides with him. But his short-term memory is now,
especially with the trauma of what's been happening with my mom, is essentially gone.
And so we've had these conversations. My dad's old eldest brother just passed, and I was just at
a funeral a couple days ago. And so I'm talking to my cousins and I'm talking with my extended
family and they were like, Hey, did you know Nana passed from an aneurysm? Did you know X,
Y, and Z? So I want to get into the conversation about how much of this is hereditary versus how
much of this is lifestyle. Because I feel like there's just an old school wisdom that so much
of your destiny is genetics and it's not, so.
And let's just break that myth right now.
The numbers are pretty shocking. And I've seen a lot reported, and I write about it in my
new book called Longevity Practical Playbook, that the estimate is as little as only 7% of your
life span. Health span is a function of genetics, which means 90% plus is a function of your
lifestyle. And a lot of it is also a function of your mindset.
Yes.
Right? I mean there's a quote in the back
of this book. So I put out two things. One is a free PDF called Peter's Longevity
Practices, which is everything I've learned, everything I do in a very readable format
Yes! For everyone, you can get this online.
You can get it free online, and then a book that
expands this, but still very, very readable. So there's a study I ran into and I was blown away
by its veracity and the numbers here. So it says, and this is in the Journal of the National Academy
of Sciences, which is one of the most prestigious, it says in a study of 69,744 women and 1,429 men
was found that optimistic people live as much as 15% longer than pessimists. And so I inherently
believe that. I inherently believe that. And this goes back to in part the will to live as well.
Here's another quick story I think that people can will themselves to death. And I think
people can will themselves to life, as well. So here's a story coming out of the Annals of
American History, and it says, as it turns out, in an extraordinary demonstration of the will to
live, two of America's founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both willed themselves
to live long enough to see the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Even though in
the early 18 hundreds, the average life expectancy was only 44 years old. Jefferson, who was 83 at
the time, and Adams who was 90 made it to July 4th, 1826, both dying on that exact date, the 50th
anniversary of when the nation was founded.
That's incredible!
It is!
I want to talk about that for a minute again,
because it's the thing that's up for me. And I'm a very intrinsically optimistic person,
and this is the thing I've been battling with my mom and been talking out with my brother is
at this moment in time, and I really hope this turns around. We're doing everything that we can,
but it's that notion. I saw the spark in my mom, it's gone out. She's like, I don't think I can
do it anymore. I can't do it anymore. And that is such a hard thing to witness. And also for
me as someone who is so… and I'm sure you've probably felt this in your own times in your own
life… when it's someone that you love so much, but then you have to realize you can't. You
You want to just shake them.
Yes! But you can't make anyone do anything. And I
think it comes back to that so cliched, but it is so true that you can only change yourself. And in
this whole journey for me, it keeps reminding me, I'm like, okay, I can show up with love in terms
of my family when I'm navigating and I really need to take care of myself, the one that, the only
person that I can make a difference with. But that will to live. I want to get to this at the
end because I don't want you guys tuning out. This is really important. But we're going to get to
a place where I want to talk about your M.T.P.s, but we're going to get there, but we ain't
going to tell you that secret until the end because that's, in terms of…
It’s probably the most important thing you could possibly learn
In this WHOLE conversation!
Is what is your M.T.P.? Yes,
That's exactly right. So the other thing that I love, and it made me laugh so hard,
was I love that it's like this is your playbook on sleep and diet and exercise, blah, blah,
blah, and NOT dying from something stupid.
Yes.
And it's like we've learned now at this point, and it's just like, let's just be real about
it. It's like so many things can take us out. I'm here in New York City, you fly all around the
world. There's so many things that random stuff, God willing doesn't happen. But let's not die
from the stupid things. And we essentially know, at least from my understanding,
you'll correct me if I'm wrong, there's four major buckets of things that we need
to watch out for. There's heart disease. What else do we have? Neurogenerative degenerative?
Neurodegenerative. Yes. Yep. Metabolic.
Metabolic. And what's our next one?
Well, cancer, I would put down in.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's right.
So I'll add the top of that. Don't dive for something stupid like the
basics. Don't text and drive.
Yes!
Guilty and always try to catch myself. There's nothing that important.
Yep, that's right.
I mean, wear a helmet if you're
biking your bicycle or skiing.
I need to do the helmet thing in New York City. I
do ride my city bike around a lot. Okay. Yes.
And wearing a seatbelt. I mean, those are just
fundamental things. All of these laws were written. Why? Because people were being killed by
these repeatable, preventable things. So that's one category of don't die something stupid.
The other category is that most people have no idea what's going on inside their bodies.
And sometimes when I discuss is people go, I don't want to know, and I keep people. It's
bullshit. Of course you want to know because you can do something about it.
Yes.
So Tony Robbins and I, backed by some amazing
people, built a company called Fountain Life. And Fountain, there's a great CEO, Bill Kapp,
a physician that started nine hospitals, became enamored by Exponential Technologies
and following my work. And we took him in as the CEO and a co-founder.
So you go in for a day and as a Fountain Life member, we basically digitize you.
We do a full body MRI, brain, brain vasculature, brain blood flow, a coronary CT looking
for not calcified plaque, which is safe, but soft plaque, which can devulse and give
you a heart attack in a microsecond.
We do your full genomics, your metabolomics,
your microbiome, your 120 biomarkers. It is everything knowable about you. Retinal
scans, skin imaging, grip strength, I mean, it goes on and on. And we've built a set of data
protocols that we ingest you. It's 150 gigabytes of data to answer two questions. One, is there
anything going on inside your body that you need to know about? And two, what's likely to get you
and how do we slow it, stop it, prevent it.
And so I like to say life is short
until you extend it, right?
Yes.
And so we've all heard about people who just passed away in
the middle of the night in their sleep…
I've had friends, yep.
…They fell and what happened? It's typically a heart attack or an aneurysm that
takes them down. And in our first 5,000 members who are seemingly healthy adults, typically in
their fifties, here are the numbers, 2% have a cancer they didn't know about. So two out of
a hundred people have a cancer walking around, just don't know it. Two and a half percent had
an aneurysm they didn't know about. 14.4% had either metabolic disease, cardiovascular
disease, neurodegenerative disease, or again, one of those other areas.
So I go every year, religiously. I hold my breath until I go through it, and then I have a
huge sense of relief. And we've saved hundreds of lives. I guarantee you. I had a friend of mine who
we're doing business with at Fountain. And I say, go through the experience so you can see
it. And he does. And we discovered two, not one, but two aneurysms in his brain.
And we saved his life guarantee you.
The human body is always developing cancers
all the time. That is a normal state. Cells replicate about 50 times in the body. And then
there are three things that happen to 'em, 50 replications of what's called the hay flick
limit. At the end of those 50 replications, most cells should die the decency to go
away and be replaced by new vibrant cells, or they can become zombie cells, senescence
cells. And we know about senescence cells, as they put out inflammatory factors, they cause
aging in all organs or they become cancer.
And what happens is your immune system
in particular, your innate immune system, your natural killer cells find and zap and kill
the cancer on a regular basis because it's part of the process. And sometimes you have what's called
immune exhaustion, where your immune system is just exhausted from battling other viruses and
other infections and cancer sneaks on through. And so this is a second level of defense to find
that cancer. When do you want to find cancer?
Early!
As early as possible, right? It's a difference between finding it
stage one and stage four is night and day.
It’s significant. What I loved so much about
this booklet because we had Tony on when Life Force came out, and I love this stuff. I've
always been passionate about it, and I love you and your work. What I appreciated
was how freakin’ simple. You're like, Hey, y'all, here’s what I do, I'm just going
to keep it really simple. This is not thick, this is not complicated. I'm going to tell you
what I do. Not saying it's going to work for you, but let me just reveal what I've been up to.
So let's start with food and eating because I feel like, and let's just be honest. So I'm so
grateful we have an audience in 195 countries and not everyone will have the potential at this
moment to be able to come to one of the clinics, or they might not have the economics.
Absolutely, and there are things you can do right now which don't cost you anything.
Correct. So that's where we're going with this.
Yes, Beautiful.
We live in a world where it's like there are
incredible potentials for things, and yeah, they do cost a lot of money, but we know our
health is worth it. And then there are things that don't cost anything besides making
new choices. So let's dive into food and talking about what to eat and what not to eat.
Yeah, really important. And when I wrote the book Life Force with Tony, it's 700 pages. And when I
set out, so Peter's Longevity Practices as a PDF, it's a beautiful PDF, and it's again, it's
for free. Longevity of Practical Playbook is a fleshed out book. You can go to Amazon,
it's a beautiful color book as well.
But I wanted to get this information out
because people have a hard time reading 700 page books.
Totally.
And there's so many diet books. So I mean, there
are hundreds of books. Where do you start and how do you consume this all? So there's no one
diet for everybody to be clear, right? I've been a vegan, I have been in a paleo diet. I
am probably mostly a Mediterranean diet now, but there's certain absolutes.
Number one, and I hate to say it, especially around holiday time, sugar is a
poison. The body was never designed to consume as much sugar as we do. So when we were evolving
again, and you could just look back over history, we didn't have sugarcane 10,000 years ago, a
hundred thousand years ago. So as we consume so much sugar and empty calories, the sugar
attaches itself to the proteins in our body like hemoglobin. And we end up having our immune system
look at this protein glucose glyphosate molecule as a foreign body, and it causes an inflammatory
reaction. So one of the very first things, if someone has cancer, you tell 'em is stop all
glucose intake, all sugar intake. Right. And sugar isn't just your sugarcoated cereals, it's white
bread, it's white rice. It's things like that.
I'm curious, to interrupt you for just a
second: Did you used to like sugar before you learned all of this?
Oh yeah, of course.
…Yeah. Were you just like, give me the…
Of course. I mean, it's like, oh my God. Reese's pieces or just candies and so forth. A hundred
percent. And now listen, it's not that I consume zero sugar, but I'm very intentional on what I'm
going to eat and I'm not stuffing my face with empty calories. So just being knowledgeable about
the body was never evolved. It's a inflammatory neuro-inflammatory, cardiac inflammatory, and just
understanding that is an important first step. The second thing is, so that's a universal.
The Other universal is whole plants easy, really consuming as much fiber and whole plants
as you can, right? It's what your parents told you to do. And then we can talk about protein
next, but there's a few interesting tricks worth noting. They can change your diet in a
microsecond. If you've got a plate in front of you with your veggies and your protein
and your carbs, eat your veggies first.
Yes!
Eat all your veggies first. That fiber going into your digestive system will slow
your digestion down. It will cause the nutrients to be absorbed first. Your protein comes next,
and then if you filled yourself on the protein and the fiber, that's great! If you have room, go
ahead and eat your carbs next. They won't spike your blood sugar anywhere near as much.
The second thing is when you're eating, it's taking a deep breath. It's what Dr. Helen Messier,
who's my Chief Medical Officer at Fountain Life says is vitamin O is…. We have two states in our
bodies. We have a sympathetic, which is our fight or flight, and we have our parasympathetic,
which is your rest and digest. And you want to be in that deep breath in deep breath out
and eat in that state. A lot of cultures have at the beginning of a meal saying grace or saying
gratitude really to put you in a state in which you're best able to take in the nutrients from
the food and where you enjoy the nutrients.
When I'm out at a restaurant, the worst thing
they do is they serve you a basket of bread and a glass of wine in the beginning. And I'll
say, can you please bring that back with the food? Because I don't want to fill myself
and spike my blood sugar instantly while sitting down. I mean the other thing is I
will not buy sugar to put in the freezer. Right. Ice cream or whatever the case might be.
No, it's really smart. You avoid the temptation, you don't resist it.
Yes, exactly.
Resistance takes down our cognitive fuel.
Yes. And you have, there's interesting theories around this. You have a certain
amount of willpower through the day.
